His results offer new explanations for why the unequal divisions of power and wealth so familiar to us today came into existence – and have persisted.īalancing materials drawn from a vast range of sources, addressing core problems that have fascinated historians, anthropologists, biologists and geographers alike – and blending his analysis to create a compelling narrative that became an international best-seller and reached a broad general market – required a mastery of the critical thinking skill of reasoning that few other scholars can rival. You may also wish to purchase from either Amazon or Blackwell’s.In his 1997 work Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond marshals evidence from five continents and across 13,000 years of human history in an attempt to answer the question of why that history unfolded so differently in various parts of the globe. Try checking the availability of this book at your school or local library or explore second hand bookshops and websites. Therefore, I would recommend this book to people not only interested in history, but in many other subjects, as this book has links to many other subjects such as economics and biology, and is an interesting book to give an overview of human civilisation, an important and so interesting subject. But this book gave me an insight into them, leading me to want to find out more about these aspects of human history. In particular, I found the sections on the invention of writing and the domestication of food fascinating, as these inventions are fundamental to our civilisation yet I had not thought much about these, let alone studied them before. It made me realise history was so much more than the Tudors and WWII! Also, Jared Diamond makes the history, even from thousands of years ago, seem relevant to the present day, giving it extra interest.

I found these so interesting as these topics are so different to what I studied in school. This book also introduced me to some different periods and topics of history I had never studied before, such as the invention of writing, the domestication of food products and the history of Australia and Africa. Particularly useful is the section “Around the world in five chapters” where each chapter has a history of a section of the world, especially useful to get an overview of whichever period you want to read more about. It also makes the book interesting as it doesn’t dwell too much on any one period so it never gets boring. This great range of history is useful in finding out what sort of history, or even another discipline, you are interested in. Guns, Germs and Steel was one of the first history books I read that I actually enjoyed! This book gives a global history over the last 13,000 years, so after reading it you gain a broad understanding across a lot of history.

Guns germs steel book